News Releases

David Gauthier joins Natural Products Canada as Regional Director

( September 27, 2016 )

Ag-West Bio and Natural Products Canada (NPC), the national centre of excellence for the commercialization of natural products, welcome David Gauthier, Regional Director, NPC-West.

Gauthier will work closely with Ag-West Bio, the Western regional node for NPC, to identify promising products, technologies, and companies for potential investment, and to ensure they are linked to the national and international resources and partners they need.

“NPC is taking a much-needed approach to this very important sector,” says Wilf Keller, president and CEO of Ag-West Bio. “There is a growing global demand for natural products, and NPC has developed a plan to help Canada benefit from that.”

Joe Vidal, president of Bioriginal in Saskatoon, says NPC will be a boon to Saskatchewan companies. “Our region has outstanding research capabilities. With the connections to these national resources and assets, companies like ours can save a lot of time and money turning that research into valuable products.”

Gauthier, who has been working in the bioscience industry for over 20 years, is one of five new hires that will be the tasked with fulfilling NPC’s mandate to align and optimize Canada’s assets – natural resources, technologies, platforms, expertise, and world-class research – into a vibrant, pan-Canadian natural products ecosystem.

“We are delighted to have David’s expertise and extensive connections to the broader business community,” says Shelley King, CEO of NPC. “He will be an important part of the NPC team that is helping companies and researchers access the resources they need to bring validated ideas to market faster, cheaper, and more efficiently.”

Additional hires across the country include Sue Coueslan, VP Communications and Stakeholder Relations; Karen Wight, VP Investment and Finance; and two regional directors: Paul-Thomas Lacroix of NPC-Quebec who will collaborate with Quebec’s regional node, the Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods, Université Laval; and Stephen Ball of NPC-Atlantic who will work closely with the Atlantic node, the PEI BioAlliance. Other regional directors will be recruited in the near future.

Partnering with a wide range of private and public investors, experts, and organizations, NPC will create a unique commercialization system to help companies and researchers address the many factors involved in bringing high-value products to the marketplace.

Key initiatives for the first year of operations include launching the NPC investment program and developing a database of the technologies, platforms, service providers, investors, and expertise essential to the successful commercialization of natural products.

Ag-West Bio Inc.

Funding for Ag-West Bio is provided by the Government of Canada and Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture through the Canadian Agriculture Partnership (CAP), a federal-provincial-territorial initiative.